The View from Calhoun County

MD Ready to Move on Offshore Wind

Here is an article from the Washington Post-owned Maryland Gazette about MD Gov. O’Malley’s next move on offshore wind for MD. Like NJ, MD has been struggling for years under PJM Interconnection’s suppression of new generating capacity in the state. MD has significant access to the Mid-Atlantic coast’s excellent offshore wind resources.

In the 2012 MD General Assembly session, Gov. O’Malley will have strong support from a new statewide poll in which

almost 62 percent of Marylanders said they would be willing to pay an extra $2 per month for electricity generated by “clean, local offshore wind farms, instead of coming from coal, oil and gas.”

In fact, as Ken Ward points out on Coal Tattoo, a new study by DBL Investors, a venture capital firm, indicates that wind and solar power have received much less in government support than any previous energy technologies at the beginning of their development. Most of those subsidies remain in place for coal, oil and gas, despite the fact that they are now dominant fuels.